Nine of us from Normanshurst spent yesterday with the Training department on our BA Risk Critical 1 session.
The first part of the morning was a refresher lecture covering BA procedures, emergency situations, BA Entry Control and its different stages, guidelines etc.
After tea break it was over to the BA room to make up our sets and be split into teams. I was to lead the last team in (Team 4) which would have Mark 'Frank' Saunders as number 2 and Ian Pettitt as number 3. Teams of three are relatively unusual and, in my experience, tend to not work as well as the traditional team of 2. You can become more spaced out, communication between team members seems to break down and it just seems unwieldy to manage.
While the other teams were committed to the Smoke House I was BAECO – taking tallies, checking briefs, working out time of whistle etc.
Our turn came eventually which was a welcome relief because it was freezing just hanging around outside.
Our brief was to enter the Smoke House through the front door, take a right-hand wall, make our way to the stairs, go up these and continue search and rescue on a right-hand wall.
Just realised I haven't previously explained procedures for moving in smoke and darkness, and how we find our way around in thick smoke.
First of all we will either be told or we will choose a wall to follow – left-hand or right-hand. This becomes your point of reference and, more importantly, your route out. If you came in following a left-hand wall you simply turnabout, put your right hand on the wall and make your way out. It is imperative that the team leader keeps in contact with the wall and is memorising (as best as they can) the route taken.
Because you are moving in possibly thick smoke or it's pitch black you need to adopt a safe method of moving forward into the building.
The team leader will be carrying the hosereel branch with his number 2 pulling in hosereel and making sure it doesn't snag as you go through doorways and round corners. We have to make sure that we don't walk into things, fall down holes or miss any doors that lead off our route. To take care of this we do the BA Shuffle. This involves keeping your weight over your back foot while sweeping ahead and across your path with your front foot, checking the floor ahead of you. In the meantime the arm that is following the wall (and holding the hosereel branch) is making large sweeps up and down the wall – you're looking for door handles and a change of direction of the wall. Your other hand is sweeping up and down in front of your face to make sure you don't walk into any protruding object. Looks weird in daylight but becomes second nature once you're in the building.
Anyway back to our jaunt around the Smoke House. The walls in the smoke house are moveable and had been set into a pattern that I don't think we'd used before. In the first room we searched we found a casualty so made it back outside quickly, as you would hope to do in a real incident. Before leaving the room where the casualty was found we did the customary metre-wide search in case there were more casualties there. This is what could happen in a real fire – people huddle together for comfort and so it's worth checking the immediate area for more casualties.
Back in to the Smoke House and quickly retrace our steps to where we had found the casualty. We made our way to the stairs, up these and continued the search upstairs where we found another casualty. Made our way out of the Smoke House with the casualty and the hosereel.
We gave a report to BAECO so that he can form a picture of what's happening in the building, which rooms have been searched etc.
Our 'hot' debrief wasn't too bad especially as we were a team of three. Got praised for good communications and searching and for me not to be tempted to move away from my wall to help in the search of rooms.
In the afternoon we had an exercise involving guidelines.These are laid into a building to help following BA teams to make there way quickly to the fire especially if it is some way into the building.
This isn't a favourite task of anybodies and is very rarely used in anger. Some guys who've been in the fire service for 25+ years have never seen them used. But we continue to train with them just in case we have to employ them at an incident.
I was to lead the first team in with Mark Saunders as number 2. As number 1 I had the guideline bag fixed on to my cylinder. My brief was to enter through the front of the Smoke House, take a left hand wall, laying Guideline A.
We did our gauge checks prior to entering and made our way into the billowing smoke and darkness. Mark had wanted to go as number 2 so that he could practice his knot tying. As team leader I find the route and identify points at which the guideline can be tied. Ideally tie-off points should be between waist and shoulder height and the guideline should be relatively taut between tie-offs. We made good progress and reached the Vertical Metal Ladder (VML). Mark tied-off on this and I went up the ladder signalling that I was clear by tapping the carabina of my personal line on the ladder.
At the top of the VML we carried on following the left-hand wall and found ourselves in the lounge at the back of the Smoke House – this is easily identified because of the sloping ceiling to the rear of the room. Mark made a brief sweep into the room and found a casualty almost immediately! We changed our focus from laying the guideline to rescue and started to make our way out. It was then that our Instructor told us to ignore the casualty and continue with the guideline – the casualty was meant for a following team!
Until now I haven't mentioned turn round times, so here goes… The maximum official capacity of our BA cylinders is 200bar, giving an average wear of 32 minutes. This obviously reduces if you are working hard, in extreme heat or are becoming anxious. The minimum we should enter a building with is 160bar. We have to calculate our turn round time so that we have enough air plus a safety margin to allow us to exit the building, ideally before our low-air whistle goes off (this should be at 55bar plus or minus 5bar).
To work out our turn round time we simply halve the amount of air we go in with and add 30. So on this drill Mark entered with 200 and I had 170bar. Our respective turn round time would be at 130bar and 115bar.
As we moved through the Smoke House we did frequent gauge checks and when I was at 120bar I told Mark we would turn round after finding the next suitable tie-off point. This took a tad longer than expected but we found a fairly good fixing point where the guideline bag was secured. We then turned around, clipped on to our freshly laid guideline and retraced our steps.
I left the building on just over 60bar – maybe a couple of minutes or so away from my whistle going off – so just about right…
We had a good 'hot' debrief but the proof of a good guidline came when following teams were able to get to the far end of the guideline using a minimum amount of air. They also complimented us on a well laid guideline – job done!
The drills could have gone better, we know that. But we never seem to have enough BA training / drills. Being on a multi-pump, chemical station means we have tons of equipment to work with in addition to the basics of ladders and hoses. But the most likely thing that's going to kill or injure a firefighter, in my opinion, is a BA wear that goes tits up. We only have a single two-hour training session each week. In that time we need to put up ladders, work pumps, squirt water, use RTC (Road Traffic Collision) equipment, train for New Dimensions (mass decontamination etc), practice for chemical incidents, do routine checks on our fire engine, fill in our little books of what we've been up to and, if there's time, squeeze in a BA drill!
The title of this course speaks volumes – it's Risk Critical. If we weren't up to scratch the instructors can take individuals off the run until such time as they can display the right skills level. But with such long gaps between BA wears it's really hard to keep up to the required level.
That's enough from me. Time for a quick vocal warm-up. The Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service Male Voice Fog Horns will be in Lowestoft town centre tomorrow crucifying (sorry) many carols and Christmas songs. Our 2 hour 'concert' normally receives donations exceeding £1000. The people of Lowestoft are a generous bunch or perhaps they are just trying to buy our silence!
Then it will be back to the Station for a Christmas dinner prepared by Lil and her team. Bring on those sprouts!
